Kitchen Queries

Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions. We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

Please note, we are only able to answer questions selected for publication and aren't able to enter into personal correspondence.

Latest Queries

Smaller Easter Egg Cake

Hi. I'm wanting to scale the Easter Egg Nest Cake recipe down, to fit in a 16cm springform cake tin. I was just going to half the recipe? Does this sound about right? Also what would be the cooking time for the cake in the smaller tin? Many Thanks

Posted by vegasbride. Answered on 9th Apr 2014 at 12.00

From the nigella team:

Scaling cakes is always a difficult process and we regret that we are unable to give sacled recipes for most of Nigella's cakes. However the Easter Egg Cake (from Feast and on the Nigella website) is a flourless chocolate cake and these can sometimes be a little more forgiving.

The original recipe is for a 23cm/9 inch springform cake pan. For a smaller 16cm/6 inch pan then halving the recipe quantities sounds about right. The cake batter should not come kore than 2/3rds up the side of the pan. Fortunately also the flourless cakes can be checked more frequently during baking than a regular cake (as they will sink slightly anyway, as they cool) and you want to avoid over-baking the cake. We suggest checking the cake after 20 minutes of baking time - it should be just set in the centre. If the centre is still slightly wobbly then bake for a further 3 to 5 minutes and check again. We would however emphasise that we have not tried the Easter Egg cake in a smaller size so we cannot guarantee the results.